Your Unemployed Daughter

Unemployment jeans: One week

Being unemployed has altered my daily wardrobe rather dramatically. Where once dresses with cardigans or black jeans with cute silk tops were the norm, now I sit in plaid pj pants and a white V-neck tee. At some point during the day I will change into my workout clothes. That is your indication that I will go to the gym.

Now let’s say post-gym I have plans to meet a former or possibly future colleague, or just to get drinks so I don’t feel like a total shut-in. What to wear? That dress makes me look like I’ve been at work all day. Can’t have people thinking I’m in denial, or worse, a wannabe. That top screams “Look at me, I’m employed!” And those pants … no. I don’t wear pants, even when I do have a job. It’s been too chilly and rainy a June to put on one of my numerous beachy sundresses. And so, inevitably, I turn to THE UNEMPLOYMENT JEANS.

Oh, sweet jeans. They are the “boyfriend” kind – i.e., baggy, straight-legged, folded at the hem. (“Boyfriend” is a total cutesy misnomer; you would date no guy who sported these jeans.) But they are comfortable. They are soft. They require no alterations. I don’t have to yank up the back when I sit down to make sure my butt crack is hidden from the prying eyes of voyeurs, or in case the exterminator comes by. No job or boyfriend? These jeans are the next best thing. Maybe better.

I bought my Unemployment Jeans 5 days before I was canned. At that point, I knew it was coming, and yet – what could I do? – I needed them, perhaps at that moment more than ever. I purchased them along with a going-to-work kind of busy lady dress, a poolside caftan, and a flowy, flowery shirt (which I would be wearing the day I was fired). The jeans have more than paid for themselves, as I’ve turned to them nearly every 70-or-below-degree day since my last day at TK Co. (and there have been many).

The duration of my layoff has changed not only me, but also the very fabric of my denim. At one point perhaps halfway in, out at a bar and in a wine-fueled rage (or just being ridiculous), I purposely wrenched the hole in the knee even further apart – as if to say, I’m in it for real now. The denim has become more shredded. There are certain unidentifiable (but highly appropriate) stains. I don’t plan to wash them.

To me, these jeans are a symbol of something. Given their tattered and admittedly unpristine state, I would not wear them to work, if I had work. Being unemployed, I can wear them. Every day if I want to.

Did you see Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? What if there were a pair of jeans that could be snail-mailed, or perhaps delivered via bicycle to save on postage costs, from unemployed person to unemployed person. A pair of jeans that would miraculously fit all of us, and bond us together despite that one’s love of Greek men, or the fact that that other one is totally stuck in her hometown filming documentaries as her neighbor with leukemia gets sicker and sicker while the rest of us gallivant around Egypt falling in holes or picking up older men at soccer camp or working backstage in summer stock until we realize our true calling, which is to act, love, act! (I may be conflating 1 and 2 here. See them both. You won’t be disappointed.)

At any rate, there should be something that bonds us unemployed. It’s not our faults we’re each alone in our little apartments, dealing with our individual rodent infestations or feeling separately guilty/insecure/pathetic with bouts of glee about our joblessness. Just because they’ve laid us off doesn’t mean they can isolate us like this! There is power in numbers!

So next time I go out, I’ll be looking for you. I’m the one in the ripped jeans that would never be acceptable in a place of business. Come say hi. I certainly won’t judge your sweatshirt with the neck ripped out, or your cutoffs that have been trimmed just a wee bit too high, or your armpit-stained white muscle tee. How could I? I’m one of you.

Unemployment jeans: One month